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Katamari Damacy
Katamari Damacy was the first game in the Katamari series. It was developed and released by Namco in 2003 on the Playstation two. It is widely regarded as one of the best games released for the system and is fairly difficult to find in second-hand game stores. The game follows the Prince and his father, The King of All Cosmos, as the Prince uses a Katamari to roll up "stuff" on Earth. Story The game begins with a scene of the King destroying all of the stars and the Moon. The next day, the King is speaking to the Prince about what had happened the night before, about how he felt as one with the Cosmos, and that it was a beautiful symphony of destruction when he destroyed the stars. In the Japanese version of the game, the King openly admits he was drunk at the time, while the English release only implies this. He then tasks the Prince with returning the stars by rolling up objects in the Katamari, hopefully before anyone notices. The game's main story is told in short cut scene depicting the Hoshino family. It starts with the children watching a Jumboman cartoon, which is interupted by a news broadcast that all of the stars in the sky, as well as the moon, have suddenly disappeared. When the children try to tell their mother, she laughs and says that such things don't happen. The story continues as the children go to see the launch of their father's space shuttle, which would have been the first to land on the moon in over 30 years. However, it is called off because the moon is gone and the shuttle has nowhere to land. On the trip to the space center, the children continue to see evidence of the King's and Prince's activity, as they see huge Katamaris and the King himself while travelling. Michiru Hoshino even has an innate connection with the Cosmos, as she can feel then stars return to their rightful place. As the Prince finishes rolling up the Moon, the Hoshino family gets rolled up into it and decides to take a "lunar vacation." Gameplay Katamari Damacy has a very untraditional control scheme, using only the analog sticks to control the Katamari. The shoulder buttons are used to view the surrounding area and to zoom in and out, but the analog sticks are the only controls necessary to play the game. The game is played by moving the Katamari around to pick up objects. Objects must be smaller than the Katamari, and the more objects collected, the bigger the Katamari gets. Once it has reached a predetermined size, the Katamari is complete and the player passes the level. However, they continue to play the level until they have run out of time, and a Katamari can be significantly larger than the minimum size. Unlike its sequel, We ♥ Katamari, there are only Large as Possible levels, here called "Make a Star". However, by beating stages 4, 8, and the Moon quickly enough and with a large enough Katamari, Eternal stages are unlocked. Eternal stages have no time limit, and can be played as long as the player wants. However, all of these stages have a finite number of objects to roll up and as such have a maximum size. While the controls in all of the Katamari games are pretty much the same, Katamari Damacy had much stiffer control, and many who have played it for the first time after later Katamari games have found it more difficult than its sequels. Notably, the Charge Roll takes longer to charge, and slowing down is harder, since the game has a higher inertial setting that later games. Reception Katamari Damacy has been almost univerally praised by game critics. With its simple controls and innovative, almost addictive gameplay, it is easy to pick up, but challenging to master. While some have mentioned the blocky graphical style to be a downside, many have come to love it as a trademark of the series. Initially, Namco did not want to release Katamari Damacy outside of Japan, since its quirky gameplay and unusual visual style were thought to only appeal to Japanese gamers. However, after the game was released and exported to other countries, gamers the world over demanded an international release. At first it was sold only in mass retail outlets for the low price of around $20US, but as it caught on, saw its way into gaming stores. IGN game Katamari Damacy a 9.0 out of 10, stating that the graphical style scaled well, with larger objects being intricately detailed, while smaller objects have a simple yet pleasing appeal. Graphical Style The Katamari series is most notable for its quirky artistic take on in-game objects. Though simple in design, tons of details can be put into the objects' texture maps, while the basic shape of the object is less detailed. This visual design comes largely from necessity. As the game was released fairly early into the life of the PS2, the large number of objects that needed to be generated caused the system to slow down. By reducing the polygon count, more objects could be rendered and displayed at once. Additionally, every object picked up by the Katamari is continuously rendered, often with animation, and as more objects get picked up, this can slow down the system processor. Objects are drawn inside of a "bounding box," a three-dimentional container, which tells the game how large the object is, including any empty space that may be in it. For this reason, complex items like an open umbrella are more difficult to pick up than otherwise "larger" objects, such as a car. This can go as far as defying common sense, as a pencil can be easier to pick up than a smaller object; since it is long and narrow, it has less volume than something of similar size to the Katamari, such as an eraser. See Also * Katamari Damacy on Wikipedia * We ♥ Katamari * Katamari * Katamari Official Website category: Katamari Games